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While pinning the heck out of some awesome fall bridal shower ideas I stumbled across a cute idea to do a version of a Diaper Cake with kitchen towels and other utensil. If you want to see the original, here was my inspiration.

I went to Home Goods, Target and Amazon for my supplies:

Normal dish towels

Microfiber dish towels

Scrubby dish towels

An apron

Cloth napkins

A pie plate

An oven mitt

Wooden spoons

Measuring spoons

I bought what I thought I needed, returned the extra sets I didn’t use, and gifted Dana a bag for the odds and ends that didn’t work. Depending on the size you’d like your cake to be or the size of your pie plate (which the cake sits in), you’ll need varying amounts of each.

I started on the bottom layer and wrapped up the largest, “normal” towels. Then, I tied them together with some twine. When that was secure, I folded the apron, which had beautiful fall colors throughout, and wrapped that around the towels to beef up the bottom layer. I knew I wanted the oven mitts on the bottom layer, so I took twine and tied it around the apron and the oven mitts to keep the entire bottom layer together. Then, I broke a plastic hanger and stuck it in the middle so the remaining two layers would have support when I needed to move the cake around.

I probably should have added more towels to the bottom layer since there was such a gap between the edge of the pie plate and the bottom, but the cake was already so full of towels. I ran back out to Home Goods and picked up a set of burnt orange cloth napkins, rolled them up and stuck then around the base of the cake.

For the second and third layers, I went through the same process. Choose towels, roll towels, secure with twine. I stuck each layer onto the hanger to make sure the sizing was appropriate. Then, I took the top layer off and added the wooden spoons into the second tier of the cake. I simply stuck them into the folds of towels, then angled and shoved until they were secure and looked right. I did the same thing for the measuring spoons, too.

Once I was satisfied with layer 2, I added the top layer. I did redo the layers three or four times until I thought they looked right, so don’t get discouraged if your towels don’t look amazing on the first go around.

Pretty cute, huh? All I needed was ribbon to cover the twine and the cake toppers🙂

For cake toppers, I ordered this adorable set of pumpkin salt and pepper shakers from Amazon. They barely fit on the top of the cake, so I was glad I went with this set instead of other sets that had two of the stumpier pumpkins. To make sure they didn’t fall off, I removed the stoppers (put them in a baggie or you’ll lose them!) and stuck each shaker on a skewer I’d shoved into a fold of the top tier.

I love love love this as a gift for a shower — especially for a bride who is a baker-chocolatier-chef extraordinaire like Dana is. It was a lot of fun to make.

It certainly is charming, isn’t it?

What clever gifts have you made for a bride-to-be? There are so many cute ideas out there!

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of hosting a bridal shower for my best friend. The bridesmaids and I decided on a pumpkin/fall themed shower, and it was beautiful, as was the bride-to-be. I’ve known Dana longer than I’ve known my little sister, so she is family to me. I love her like a sister and was so excited to throw her a shower that I knew she’d love.

The decorations and favors were my favorite part, which is probably no surprise. We decided on a fall/falling-in-love themed shower early on, so for decorations we used pumpkins, flowers, gourds, etc. Emma made the cutest bride and groom pumpkins:

I carved a pumpkin (with a steak knife… don’t do that, btw) to use as a vase for the centerpiece on my fireplace mantel. And Emma made an adorable “Falling in Love” banner to hang there, too. Isn’t it adorable?!?

With decor that cute, we had to have Dana open her gifts there.

And she got a lot of gifts. That girl is loved!

Dana is a baker & chocolatier, so food was a big deal at the shower. We had a shmorgishborg or fall goodies: mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin rolls, apple pie dip, spice cake…

Dana’s future-mother-in-law made a beautiful cake, too.

For games, we played the “Don’t say wedding” game. Dana’s mom, Jen, was the winner — she is a champ at that game. It is impressive!

We also tried a game I’d never played at a shower before, so for a lack of better name I’ll call it the “Paper Plate Bride” game. Here’s the gist. Everyone takes a paper plate and puts it on their head:

Then someone (me) tells everyone what to draw. They cannot look at their plate.

I had them draw:

a line

a bride standing on the line

a veil on her head

a bouquet in her hands

a church next to the bride

At the end of the game, we did eliminations.

I had everyone put their plate in the air. Then started running through the elimination. “Leave your plate in the air if the bride is standing on the line.” *plates go down* “Leave your plate in the air if the veil is on her head.” *plates go down* “Leave your plate int he air if the bouquet is in her hands.” *plates go down* … and you get the idea. It was so funny to watch.

We turned the winning plate into Dana’s ribbon bouquet.

For favors and prizes, I made canned goods. Probably not too, shocking, huh? I also design the cutest labels for them all!

I also had signs throughout the house noting the different stations. Everything matched. I loved it.

My gift to Dana was a kitchen towel cake — I’ll share a tutorial on this soon — and it was one of my the best things I’ve ever made, if I do say so myself.

It even had pumpkin salt & pepper shakers as cake toppers!! OMG THE CUTENESS!

It was a wonderful day for a wonderful bride. The bridesmaids made it spectacular. Here we are with our favorite bride-to-be!

I went to Hobby Lobby to buy one knob and left with my knob and a ton of fake flowers. Hobby Lobby has the best flowers. I especially love their paper flowers, which don’t look real, but also don’t look like they are supposed to be real.

The best part about the flowers was the price! Each sprig was 80¢ on clearance.

I scooped up all of the clearance flowers to make an arrangement for our family room. I wanted to use the vase that we used as our unity candle for our wedding. It’s been sitting in our guest room with the half-burned floating candle collecting dust. Instead of filling the vase with the glass marbles that often accompany floral arrangements, I decided to use corks. We got married at a winery, so it made sense to use corks with the vase for that reason. Plus, I have so many corks! So, corks were both creative and cost effective!

I tried out my plan before cutting any of the flowers down.

Once I decided that I liked the cork and the flowers in the vase, I cut down the stems to fit.

Then, I started to put everything together in the vase. This was easier said than done because the corks didn’t really want to fall nicely in line. First I tried stacking them so everything was in a vertical line. Five tries later… I gave up on this method.

I opted to stick the flowers in first, then just toss all of the corks in and let them naturally fall into place. It seemed like the only other method to try, so I just did it over and over again under they fell a way that I liked.

Here’s what I came up with:

This picture took forever to take because someone kept getting in the way….

This was after he stole a cork and ran away with it, forcing me to chase him under our kitchen table. The joys of having a mischievous dog. Thanks, Rem.

Anyway… I love how this turned out and that it is secretly sentimental. If you look close you can see the inscription from our wedding. You can also see little specs of the green stem.

For now, the arrangement is living next to our television. I want to jazz up this space a little bit so it is less black.

We’ll see if it drives Brian nuts having a few sprigs in front of the TV.

If you see any clearance sprigs at your local HL, pick ’em up! They add such a nice pop of color and a fresh look to a room.